A Year in Books: Review of 2010

January 2010

Dutch woman Miep Gies, who brought food to and helped hide Anne Frank and her family during the Holocaust, dies at 100.

The Caldecott Medal for the best American picture book for children goes The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney.

American crime writer Robert B. Parker, best remembered for his Spenser novels, dies at 77.

Poet Christopher Reid wins the 2009 Costa Book of the Year award for his collection, A Scattering, a tribute to his late wife Lucinda Gane.

Philip Gross wins the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize with The Water Table - a collection of poetry about the Severn estuary.

Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, dies after suffering a heart attack at 72.

Reclusive legend of literature J.D. Salinger dies at 91 and The Catcher in the Rye becomes AbeBooks’ bestselling book in January.

AbeBooks’ bestselling signed book of the month is The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.

AbeBooks’ most expensive sale of January is Mundus Subterraneus by Athanasius Kircher for $10,000. Mundus Subterraneus was first published in 1664 and suggests that tides are caused by water moving to and from a subterranean ocean. This edition was published in 1678.

February 2010

Former odd-job man Simon Beckett, unknown in his home country of Britain, is revealed as continental Europe’s bestselling author.

June 2010

Louis de Bernieres, the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, reveals he is losing the use of his right hand due to Dupuytren’s contracture.

Nobel laureate Derek Walcott pulls out of the race to become Oxford professor of poetry. It’s the start of a chaotic series of events involving sexual harassment claims and whispering campaigns. The winner, Ruth Padel, lasts nine days in the job.

Portuguese author Jose Saramago dies at 87. He is best known for Blindness, written in 1995. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998.

AbeBooks’ bestselling signed book of June is The Passage by Justin Cronin.The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek – featured by right-wing media figure Glenn Beck – is the overall bestselling book.

September 2010

Barbara Holland, an American writer who specialized in writing about hedonism, dies at 77. Her essays were collected in Endangered Pleasures.

First editions of Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer become very scarce after the Pentagon pulps 10,000 copies of the book because it spills too many secrets about the US operations in Afghanistan.

October 2010

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian author based in Spain, is awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature. The 74-year-old is the first South American winner since Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

Jonathan Franzen’s British tour to promote Freedom is a nightmare - he discovers the UK printers have printed the wrong version and then someone steals his glasses (off his face) at a signing.

The Man Booker Prize is won by Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question. The novelist, who has been publishing books for almost 30 years, says he thrilled to be “discovered at 69.”